Top 5 Ways IFTTT Can Help Make Your Home Safe

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The promise of a connected home where all the smart devices work together to make life easier and more comfortable for homeowners seems like a very desirable scenario. But sometimes, getting devices from different manufacturers to work together and ‘talk’ to each other can become a difficult task, certainly easier said than done. Luckily for smart tech users, IFTTT, a San Francisco-based startup, is here to help.

IFTTT, which stands for “If This Then That”, is a free consumer web service that has been widely used in computing for some years. It helps create scenarios or —as they call them, ‘recipes’. A recipe is the result of combining a trigger (If This) and an action (Then That), so that different internet-connected devices and services interact and work together to achieve an effect. There are hundreds of recipes created by companies and individual users in the IFTTT channels dedicated to smart home devices, but all users can create their own, and adapt them to their specific needs.

In this post we have compiled the best five ways in which IFFFT can help improve your home security.

Automatically Arm the alarm when the house is empty

With IFTTT, there are several ways to detect that you have left your house. It is then very simple to configure the alarm to automatically Arm itself. Cloud based smart locks or geo-location services will be able to indicate that the residents of the home are no longer there. An IFTTT recipe can use this information as a trigger: “If I lock the front door” or “if I am 500 meters from my home”, “then: Arm the alarm system”. This is very useful, as it does not require you to remember to arm the alarm. It will be done automatically once the action is triggered.

Send a text if a smoke, water of carbon monoxide emergency is detected

IFTTT makes it possible to configure a recipe in which, if one of the home devices detect an unusual amount of smoke, water or any other trouble sign, a text message would be immediately delivered, either to yourself, or to a trusted neighbor.

Set the camera to start recording the moment an unusual movement is detected

A smart camera IP can be triggered to start recording by any given action: either someone entering the house when the alarm is connected, or if someone opens your safe or your bedroom window. Additionally, the footage can be streamed live to your smartphone.

Automatically lock the doors when the house goes into night mode

It is easier than it seems to forget to lock all the house doors before going to sleep. A smart lock can be set to lock itself automatically at a certain hour in the day, or when all the lights are turned off, or when the alarm is armed in night mode. The great thing about IFTTT is that there are many routes to achieve the same goal, and users can choose the one that best suits their needs.

Adjust the home thermostat if the outside temperature drops too low

In cold places, a sudden drop of temperature may freeze a house’s pipes, causing serious damage. This damage can be easily prevented, by configuring an IFTTT recipe in which the home temperature adjusts itself to the outside weather conditions using information from a weather service, keeping the house warm even when it’s cold outside.

As you can see, automatic triggers can make your life much safer. The integration of IFTTT with connected home solutions enhances user experience, bridging the gaps between the different communication protocols, allowing to connected different type of devices and helping achieve seamless integration in the connected home ecosystem.